


Promise You Won't Throw Me Out?

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [238]
Category: DCU
Genre: First Meeting, Flirting, M/M, secret identities are secret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 15:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18096803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: The reporter is a nobody. Nobody Bruce has ever heard of, that is.





	Promise You Won't Throw Me Out?

The reporter is a nobody. Nobody Bruce has ever heard of, that is. Big name newspaper sends no-name scribe; it doesn’t inspire confidence. Neither, when Bruce finally gets a look at him, does the man himself.

He’s tall and slouchy, this Clark Kent whoever. He’s got dark hair slicked back harder than concrete, big glasses that are somehow too big for his face. An awkward smile that goes a little crooked when they shake hands.

“Mr. Wayne,” Kent says. It almost comes out as a squeak. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He has to fight to turn on the charm; two cracked ribs and bruises the size of Man-Bat’s fists all over his body make it really damn hard. “Likewise, Mr. Kent. And all the way from Metropolis, no less. How was your flight?”

Kent freezes, his hand still caught in Bruce’s grasp. “My, er--?”

“Your flight. You took Wayne Airlines, I trust.” He trots out a smile, the sateen one that makes shareholders weak in the knees. “Don’t tell me if you didn’t; I don’t want to think any different. I want to like you, Mr. Kent.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do. Or else I wouldn’t have agreed to this interview.” If his VP of Marketing hadn’t forced him to do it. A puff piece, of all things, a soft magazine feature, all in the name of building the brand. God, the things he did for his fucking shareholders. “Come on, drinks are in the library. Alfred will fetch us when dinner is served.”

Kent bobs his head, his cheeks candy-apple pink. “Uh, sure. Great. That sounds great.”

Except he won’t drink a drop. Not even a beer or the 20-year old scotch.

“But it’s, uh, it’s fine, Mr. Wayne. You go right ahead.”

Bruce pours himself a double, heartburn be damned. Something tells him that he’s gonna need it.

“So,” he says, with a warmth he does not feel, “do you want to start the interrogation part of the evening now?”

“The interrogation?” Kent is drifting around a little, gawking at the shelves upon shelves of books.

“Yes.” There’s a hit of irritation; it sours the scotch. “You know, the question-and-answer period of the evening: my favorite food, my sad family history, what I’ll be wearing to the Wayne Foundation gala this year.”

“Mmm. Uh huh.”

“You have done this before, haven’t you?”

That gets Kent’s attention, a big blink of those guileless eyes. “Done what?”

“Conducted an interview.”

“Oh!” A wide, toothpaste smile. “Yes, of course I have, Mr. Wayne.”

He takes a sip of his drink. And another. Reaches for his favorite tactic, _disarming_. “You know, if you sat down and opened your notebook, Mr. Kent, I might let you call me Bruce.”

“Um?” Kent says. “You, ah. My notebook. Right. I should do that.”

It takes him two tries and another round of that blush before he’s got his pen poised, before he’s sitting in the wingback opposite Bruce and squaring his jaw. He can’t quite look Bruce in the face.

“This isn’t the formal part of the interview,” he says to the fire in the grate. “I mean, it’s part of it and all, it’s just--this is more a, um, more like a chat. So I can get a feel for you, for where the piece might go, you know. Then we’ll hit the more serious stuff when next week when I come back with my photographer.”

“Sure. I understand.” He waits until Kent braves a gaze. “Tonight’s more like a first date.”

The effect is immediate and frankly, hilarious: the guy turns the color of ketchup; his ears, his throat, the whole nine. And there it is, Bruce thinks, the one failsafe way he knew how to block the sting of a reporter, how to foil anybody who took Bruce Wayne at face value: flirt. It worked every damn time. He leans back in his seat and keeps hold of Kent’s eyes and thinks: _sometimes, it’s too fucking easy._

“Oh,” Kent says faintly. “I mean, uh. That’s one way to put it. Metaphorically speaking.”

Bruce laughs. His drink’s made it easy. “So, Mr. Kent--”

“Clark. I can’t call you Bruce if you don’t call me Clark.”

“All right. _Clark_.” He draws the word out on his tongue. “What would you like to know?”

“How long have you lived in this house?”

“All my life. But that’s in the public records. You knew that. Try again.”

Clark squares his shoulders. Sits up a little straighter. “Ok. Who’s Alfred?”

“Technically, he’s my butler.”

“But un-technically? Or, ah, practically speaking, I guess.”

“He’s more like a father. He raised me after my parents died.” He waves a hand, takes in the tall shelves, the heavy console tables, their faded, sturdy chairs. “This was their house, you know. Well, my grandfather’s first. He built it right before World War I.”

“Do you like living here?”

“That’s an odd question.”

Clark tilts his head, his pen slack on the paper. “Is it? I don’t think so.”

“It’s my family’s home. Of course I like it.”

“Hmmm.”

“What’s that mean, hmmm?”

“It means that what I’ve seen of this place doesn’t really jive with what I know about you.”

“And how’s that?”

“It feels like a museum, this place.”

He stares at the man, doesn’t have to fake sounding curious. “In what way?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It, ah. I mean, I haven’t seen much of it. Just the outside when I drove up. And the foyer, the hallway. This room.”

“And yet you’ve already formed an opinion which you’ve gone out of your way to mention.” He rolls his empty glass between his fingers. “So finish your thought, Clark. You’ve got me curious.”

“You promise you won’t throw me out?” A joke. Not joking.

“No,” Bruce says lightly. The same.

Clark tugs at his tie, a nervous little gesture that Bruce finds oddly charming. “This house feels like a shrine to the past,” Clark says, “like a fortress, almost. A place designed to keep you stuck back there, in the choices other people made. A place that kind of demands that you be alone.”

Bruce blinks, the air suddenly heavy. The crystal feels like lead in his palm. “Are you telling me I’m lonely, Mr. Kent?”

“I didn’t say that. Nobody that reads Page Six would, either. I think you have plenty of company when you want it.”

“Right.”

Clark’s glasses are slipping. He doesn’t seem to notice. “But I don’t think you stay in a place like this if you want to make people a habit, you know? Gotta be easier to go out and have a good time and then come home and close the world out behind locked doors and that big, iron gate.”

There’s no hesitation in Kent’s eyes now. The guy has eyes like lasers, like he’s seeing past Bruce’s face and into his soul. It’s damned unsettling. Especially because, he realizes with a start, Clark is pretty. How the hell had he missed it? Concentrating like this, his face not swallowed by black clunky frames, there’s a light in him, a spark, that makes the booze in Bruce’s belly turn over hot. He may be flighty, this Kent, a little all over the place, but right now, in the orange glow of Bruce’s hearth, one black wave falling over his forehead, his expression pointed curious, he’s also beautiful.

Bruce gets up and goes for the bar cart. Breathes. Never mind that he’s had too much already. Must have, if his brain is going in that particular direction. “That’s one way to read it, I suppose," he says. "An unnecessarily complicated and completely wrong one. But then that’s your job, isn’t it? Spin a story that sells newspapers rather than hands out the dull, everyday truth.”

Clark laughs. It’s deeper than Bruce would have guessed. “Or maybe you underestimate your own complicated nature, Bruce. Maybe you’re just selling yourself short.”

“Maybe.” He turns back to Kent, to the fire, and takes a long sip. “Maybe not."  


**Author's Note:**

> Who watched _Superman_ (1978) this weekend? Me!


End file.
